Theresa May can't let privacy campaigners get in the way of keeping Britain safe

Judging by recent opinion polls, Theresa May’s first three months as Prime Minister has been well received by the general public. Yet there is one constituency likely to be distinctly unhappy with her move to No 10.

So-called "privacy" campaigners and lobbyists are relatively small number but loud in volume. They regularly make accusations that Britain’s spy agencies are carrying out "mass surveillance" or are hell-bent on "snooping" on your emails. They fear the arrival of - or genuinely believe they are living in - a big brother state. With a libertarian bent and a propensity to admire Edward Snowden, such groups have found some sympathisers in the House of Commons and in the media. However, they have also long had an enemy in the current Prime Minister.

In her previous role as Home Secretary, May had been making the case for a revamp and renewal of the state’s investigatory powers for years. One consequence of this was that, to privacy campaigners, she was the public face of supposed "mass surveillance". This can be dated back to the spring of 2012, when May introduced legislation requiring Communication Service Providers (CSPs) to store a small number of additional datasets relating to Communications Data (CD). This relates to the “who, when, where and how” of a communication (when it comes to the modern surveillance debate, the UK plays the role of the diffident hipster: it was immersed in metadata-related arguments before Snowden made them cool).

The CD Bill - unhelpfully and inaccurately dubbed a "Snooper’s Charter" - ended up on the scrapheap after privacy campaigners lobbied hard against it, a good deal of negative media coverage was generated and a Parliamentary joint committee concluded the bill paid “insufficient attention to the duty to respect the right to privacy”.

This failure was a chastening experience for the Home Secretary and dipping her toe back in these waters seemed unlikely in the short-term. However, the issues that led to the bill being drafted in the first place only got worse. The ongoing shift in communication methods meant access to CD continued to decline. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies’ job of reconstructing criminal networks, stopping child abuse and monitoring terrorist networks became ever more challenging.

Then, Snowden began disclosing secrets concerning the work of the UK’s signal intelligence agency, GCHQ. From a practical viewpoint, intelligence targets quickly changed their communication methods. Yet the politics of GCHQ’s work also became more hazardous, with new oxygen breathed into privacy campaigners’ work. All of a sudden, a whole new raft of surveillance issues were up for debate.

The Home Secretary was required to respond and this is where the Investigatory Powers (IP) Bill - due to be debated in the House of Lords today - comes in. Theresa May spearheaded this attempt to update the laws pertaining to the UK government’s investigatory powers. The IP Bill consolidates part of these laws in one piece of legislation and provides more transparency and oversight regarding the state’s capacity to collect data. It is one of the most comprehensive legal frameworks in the world related to the state’s investigatory powers.

The politicians and campaigners who helped kill the CD Bill have just as much distaste for what May’s IP Bill. For example, the IP Bill argues for the MI5, MI6 and GCHQ’s ability to collect and analyse electronic data in bulk. The use of these powers is "double-locked", requiring ministerial and judicial sign off. Yet these safeguards have not sated the privacy critics because they have a genuine belief that agencies like GCHQ truly are intent and capable of carrying out mass surveillance. This is a false assertion. The threats the UK faces are providing an overwhelming amount of work for our intelligence agencies; there is neither the legal ability nor the desire to go snooping through random citizens’ emails or listening in on phone calls just for kicks.

Other allegations the privacy campaigners have made concerning the IP Bill have included the suggestion that the government is planning to outlaw encryption. Neither May nor David Cameron before her have suggested any such policy. What the government is attempting to do is increase access to encrypted communications in specific and limited set of circumstances. Post-Snowden, messaging services using end-to-end encryption has flourished and government’s access to such data has diminished as a consequence. The IP Bill aims to ensure that if the government serves a warrant to a CSP which provides a service in the UK, that it can remove encryption if it is “reasonable” and “practicable” for them to do so. It is the same concept as a telephone company removing encryption on phone calls upon request and with a warrant.

Naturally there should be the requisite oversight on the work of intelligence and security agencies: our ongoing dedication to freedom and liberty demands it. Yet the demands being made by privacy campaigners do not make allowances for the rapid changes occurring in modern day communication methods. They also do not make allowances for the scale of the security threats the UK today faces.

The Prime Minister does makes such allowances because, for years now, she has had to. Her time as Home Secretary proved the perfect education in familiarising herself with the national security situation and the fast-moving and complex issues regarding the state’s investigatory powers. That experience will only aid her as Prime Minister. That she has proven herself to be a hard-liner on these issues certainly upsets a vocal minority. Yet it will also help ensure the ongoing security of the majority.

Robin Simcox is a non-resident associate fellow at the Henry Jackson Society